Rose Valley Swat

While I was home for X-mas my buddy Henry Oakey put together a hunt out near his house in Crozet. As you can see we had a great day. We ended up with 21 honkers and were out of the field around 9:15. Most of the birds had just shown up the day before and we were hunting a recently picked corn field. We were fortunate enough to have one of Henry's friends Glen Shifflet with us who is a master with a goose call and furnished a trailer full of full body decoys. Most of the birds we saw worked perfectly and everybody shot straight so we were in and out of there pretty quick. Thanks Oakey for a great hunt.

Band Report

I just got back the band certificate for the bird we took a couple of weeks ago. I must admit this is the least interesting band certificate I have ever received. The bird was banded in Cortez, Colorado which is about 300 miles south west of where we got him. Can't imagine what would posses this bird to fly over the rocky mountains and north??? to get where we were. My guess is there was a woman involved. Only other bit of interesting info on here is that he was hatched in 2005.

Last two bands I have collected were from Alberta and Saskatchewan which is way cooler than cortez, co

DELL IS THE WORST COMPANY ON THE PLANET!!!

Just wasted the last two hours dealing with the world's crappiest company!





A couple of weeks ago I went and got my dell ink cartridges refilled at Cartridge World(which is a great company that provides a great service). I love this company because they are friendly, helpful, and they provide an environmentally friendly and more importantly a cheaper service than just buying new cartridges.(you save 50%)





Anyway my piece of crap dell printer would not recognize that the cartridges were in fact full, and long story short I attempted to address this with an online chat session with a dell techie that ended up abandoning me after I waited around for an hour and 7 minutes. Here is the transcript from the last part of the chat log.


10/23/2008 12:05:35PM
Agent (Pro Support Heather Wray): "Just a moment, while I get you over to the correct folks, David."
10/23/2008 12:05:43PM
Session Transferred to Queue (US.Consumer.TS.EA.Printer)
10/23/2008 01:12:24PM
Session Ended

THen I decided to get somebody on the phone and for the next hour they transfered me to 5 different departments and asked me for my service tag 5 different times before I got to some ding dong in India that told me that I have to buy a new 60 dollar cartridge from dell if I want my printer to work and their is nothing they can do to help me.

Absolutely unbelievable!!! I am going to enjoy watching this horrible company die a slow death and get their lunch eaten by Apple, HP, Toshiba you name it.

If any body ever wants to write a case study for MBA students on what not to do if you want to stay in business DELL is the perfect example.

2nd week of the season

sunrise

early retrieve

the whole posse

banded green brain

a little bling

Whit, Winchester, Hangen and I all headed south on Thurday night after class. We had a great hunt on Friday morning, which was very satisfying for Whit and I since we could not do anything right in the same spot the week before. We ended up killing 20 ducks by about 10:30. We had a pretty diverse bag consisting of mostly green wing teal, a couple widgeon, gadwall, one bull pintail, and 3 green brains one of which was banded. We were all really fired up about the band since I have not seen one taken since 2003. Dex made a great retrieve so the Marks generously agreed to let him keep the band. I will post the info on where it is from as soon as I get the certificate. Dex also made a spectacular but scary retrieve on the pintail as well. The bird was crippled and swimming fast enought just to stay beyond his reach. I tried my best to call him off the bird as it was obvious he would not catch it without help but he would not listen a continued into deep water. Fortunately winchester responded quickly and ran for the canoe and we were able to help dex catch the bird and return to shore safely but by the time we caught up with him he had chased the bird close to a quarter mile.

We hunted that afternoon and again the next morning and only killed one blue wing teale which is a total mystery to me as the conditions only got duckier as the weekend progressed.

All in all a great trip, and we all earned an afternoon nap

Orcas Island/Seattle

Big Ole Purple StarFish

Judd sure knows how to handle some Kelp
At the Reception
SeaHawks Game Kearney is a Beast!
Whit and Hana fixin to Make OUT!

Pretty Spectacular view as we paddle back to the Island

Last weekend Sarah and I went to the wedding of some good friends of ours from Boulder. The wedding was held at Orcas Island wich is one of the San Juan Islands a couple hours north west of Seattle. Neither of us had spent much time in this part of the country and we were totally blown away. We got to meet a bunch of cool people and the scenery was unbelievable. On the way back we visited all of our buddies in Seattle and got to see a bunch of UVA friends who were in town to see our friend Patrick Kearney play against the St.Louis rams. As we walked up to the stadium we were greeted by an eight story tall Kearney flexing on the side of the stadium. The SeaHawks spanked the Rams and we had a great time. All in all a fantastic but exhausting trip. Can't wait to go back.

Willie Nelson At Red Rocks 2008

Willie is the man!!

Willie @ Red Rocks

We went and saw Willie Nelson play at Red Rocks and he blew us away. Winchester, and his fiance Melissa teamed up with us and we got to the show a couple hours early so we could tailgate. Winchester brought a small grill and we grilled up some delicious Brats.

Jerry Jeff Walker opened for Willie and we all really enjoyed his set. It was an absolutely beautiful evening that was complimented by a pretty outrageous lightning storm out over the city of Denver. Willie as usual totally rocked despite the fact that he did not close with Whiskey River which puzzled Sarah who has seen him more times than I can count and insists that he closes with that jam every time she has seen him.

LOOK OUT TROUT

Sarah and I went and fished boulder creek on Sunday, and Sarah pulled in her first 3 trout. All dinkers but you gotta start somewhere. I am predicting greatness. Trout in Colorado might as well just give up.

Leland Hog Slaying

Me hard at work

Notice the t-shirt

The Whole Gang

Sarah with her hard earned dinner

We all went out fishing on the 5th with Captain Bill Crandell on his boat C-worthy. We have been coming to leland our whole lives and never gone out charter fishing before but we decided to give it a try to celebrate Sarah and Taylor's birthdays. I sincerely hope it will become an annual tradition because we had an absolutely awesome time and came away with a lot of good fish to eat.

The weather was perfect,the beer was cold, and the highlights were a big king salmon and a nice brown trout which is a really rare catch out on the big lake

Dream Stream

Nice Fish with Stonefly in his mouth

Click on these pics to see the full size image

What an incredible weekend!! Friday afternoon Winchester and I teamed up in Golden to head up to Granby to visit Crabtree who is working up there for the summer. We rolled into town about 4 o'clock just in time to get a tour of the development Crabtree is working on and then hit the golf course. We squeezed in 8 holes and a couple froth dogs before we got rushed off the course by a punishing thunder storm.

John hard at it

Perhaps the coolest feature of this development is that they have a huge stretch of private water on the Frazer River and a river camp set up right next to the water as a perk for members. Crabtree was able to reserve the camp for us which was really cool. The camp consisted of 3 big canvas tents furnished with card tables and bunks. It also came equipped with a big fire pit, grilll, outhouse, firewood, and pretty much anything else you might need on a camping trip.

Our Rig

As soon as Crabtree, Winchester and I got out of our soaking wet clothes a geared up to go fish the evening hatch the rain quit and our buddy Sheats showed up. We all fished till dark, and all of us caught fish(primarily browns) but Crabtree took advantage of his previous knowledge of the river and caught the most and biggest fish of the evening.

Crabtree hooked up

We quickly got the fire and the grill going and busted out some fancy irish whiskey that Sheats brought that just tasted like regular old whiskey to me but Sheats and Crabtree think they are real fancy so they made me drink it out of a cup instead of the bottle. We grilled up the steaks and corn and had a first class dinner. We all are friends from B-school so we rarely get the opportunity to hang out with each other in such a relaxed and cool setting, so we were all soaking it up and promising each other we would not take school so seriously next year. As the fancy whiskey began to set in we also started telling jokes that I would not dare post to this blog, but I think Crabtree stole the show with a couple side splitters I had never heard before. About 1 o'clock we decided it was time to hit the hay.

Sheats Hooked Up

The real driving force behind this weekend was that Morgan Read, a mutual friend of Crabtree's and mine, invited us up to Kremmling for the weekend to go fishing with him and John Papini, who is a friend and coworker of Morgan's from California, on a private stretch of the Colorado River. Morgan, Crabtree and I have teamed up in the past on other hunting and fishing trips and they have been telling me about this place for a while now. We had also planned on fishing it earlier in the summer but cancelled our plans because the run off was so big this year the river was still way to high to fish. Anyway point being we were all really looking forward to it.

We all got up around 6 and headed to the ranch which was about 30 minutes away after loading up on beer and groceries. Sheats and I were the first to get there because Morgan and John did not get in till 3:30 in the morning on Saturday and Crabtree is a freak and decided to ride his bike the 29 miles to the ranch.

Sheats and I got on the water I am guessing about 9:00 and it was about 9:15 before I was screaming at Sheats to come help me land and document what I thought would certainly be the fish of the trip. I was fishing a big yellow stone fly with a d-sheats special dropper, and I cast to a big boulder in the middle of the river hoping to pick up a fish on the seam between the current and the protected water behind the boulder. To my suprise a monster rainbow came up and inhaled the stonefly on the pillow in front of the boulder. The fish came out of the water twice and put up a hell of a fight. Sheats rushed over and helped me land it with his net and it clocked in at about 19inches but was a reall fatty.(Sheats is a deadbeat and has not sent me the pics yet) Turns out however that this fish was no where near the biggest fish we would see this weekend, and was actually sort of standard on this stretch of river. All of us proceeded to have an absoulutely incredible day of fishing. We were treated to an impressive yellow sally and caddis hatch that got a bunch of nice fish to start rising, but I think everybody would agree the most damage was done with caddis or mayfly nymphs on the swing.

Beautiful Sunset from the Bridge

Morgan talking to JD

As it got dark we all convened on the bridge that you can see in a couple of the pics and broke out the Jack Daniels which had been sitting on ice all day and started to tell lies and compare battle scars from the mosquitoes that had been praying on us all day. We polished off the bottle and were treated to a great meal by John and waited on by a big boned waitress named Anastasia, who seemed to have a crush on John. We all got pretty toasty and hit the sack pretty early at little dumpy hotel in Kremmling, CO.

Fat Daddy Himself

We got up early the next day and started all over again. The weather was perfect and for some reason the mosquitoes did not bother us. Once again we all crushed it, but for me the highlight of the trip came when the fish you see above came out from the depths and inhaled my Orange Blossom Special. I have always been a big fan of streamer fishing and it is fish like this one that inspire my affection for fishing big ugly streamers slow and deep. Fortunately Morgan was close by and was able to come over and get a good picture. Neither of us had a tape of a scale but based on the forearm test we guestimated 21-22 inches but more impressive then its length was its weight and girth. Definitely the heaviest rainbow I have ever caught in the states. This fish was an incredible way to wrap up an absolutely incredible weekend. We are all permanently in Morgan's debt for sharing such a special place with us.

Coot Lake Pics

Sarah and I went out to coot lake last week to let dex go swimming and we got to see a pretty incredible double rainbow that you could see end to end followed by a pretty spectacular sun set. Next time Mom or Bob are visiting we will have to borrow their photography skills to capture Dex launching off the bank to retrieve his bumper.

Diddy Rocks Boulder and Chuck Diesel Rocks the Lazy Dog

We started off the weekend by playing golf at Flat Irons and it pains me to admit the Huston shot a 41 on the front nine and ended up taking all of our money. Next I took the team to Juanitas for some potent margaritas which complimented the beer that was consumed on the golf course. Galen managed to keep it together though because he knew he needed to perform later in the night. So we helped Galen tote some of his gear over to the Lazy Dog where the band "Frogs Gone Fishin" http://www.myspace.com/frogsgonefishin was playing. The band was entertaining but Galen and his other buddy from Colorado College stole the show.

The next day we got up and drove up towards fort collins and headed west into the poudre canyon. We spent all day fishing the poudre with limited success. THe water was way to high, but we suprised Huston with tickets to go see Sam Bush and Lori McKenna play at Mishawaka http://www.mishawakaconcerts.com/ which is one of the most spectacular music venues in Colorado right along the Poudre River. THe setting was definitely very cool but the evening was slightly marred by the fact that Lori McKenna did not show up and the place was literaly crawling with the most abnoxious hippies on the planet. I have nothing against hippies, and might even be considered one by some people's standards but these people smelled like they had been rolling around in dog shit and had absolutely no regard for other peoples space as they flailed around in their acid induced noodling. To make things worse I had dex with me because he went fishing with us, and I had to leave him in the back of the truck on the side of the road that was swarming with these hippies, so I spent the whole show worrying that dex was going to eat a hippie. The 2 hour drive back to boulder was not that sweet either at 2 in the morning.

We slept in the next day and had a late breakfast at lucile's and sent huston packing. All in all it was a great weekend.

Steve Earle : Fort Worth Blues

Saw Steve Earle play last night in the Boulder Theatre. I did not really want to go because he has a tendency to start preaching about the war and death penalty more than he plays music. I think he must have figured out that he was annoying people because he played his first 5 or 6 songs without saying one word in between. He got in his two cents before the night was over but it was pretty tasteful. Anyway it was a great show he played a long set with no breaks and his wife Allison Moorer opened for him and joined him on a couple sets. My first impression of her when I saw her play last summer was that she was kind of a barbie doll with out much substance but I really enjoyed her set this time. Thanks for making me go Sarah!

Ryan Bingham - Southside Of Heaven: Video - Closed Captioned

great song and video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7H_KpispY#
here is the link for the video for some reason the one above only works about half the time.

CollegeWeekends.com Progress

The primary purpose of this post is to see if creating a CollegeWeekends.com blog might make sense. I have learned recently that web crawlers seem to love blog posts and creating a blog for your company and updating it regularly can do wonders for your ranking with search engines. So anyway I am writing this post to see how the search engines will treat it.

Recently we hired a web developer as an independent contractor to start on the complete redevelopment of the site. We are really excited about this guy, and hope that he will blow our socks off with the first couple of projects he has been given. It is my hope that he will indeed knock our socks off and then become a permanent member of the team.

This issue alone has caused my teammates and I a lot of grief. Some of us are strong believers that in order for CollegeWeekends.com to be a success it is important that we have a talented developer as part of the team. On the other hand there is the argument for hiring a web development firm to handle the creation of the site and then hire IT help to handle problems as they arise.

I am a member of the first team. I want to have somebody who goes to bed at night thinking about CollegeWeekends.com and how to make it better, not some team of robots that is treating our company and our business model as if we are just another line item in a long list of things to do. None of us have technical skills and all though I have a strong concept of how I want the site to perform I want somebody who knows about all the available technologies and all the opportunities on the web to direct the development. After all with out the Internet we have no business so we need somebody who lives and breathes the Internet to architect our site.

Bare with me this is for Google. CollegeWeekends.com, Charlottesville Hotels, UVA Guest Houses, college weekends

Ryan Bingham Rocks

My buddy sheats introduced me to Ryan Bingham's album Mescalito about two weeks ago. I have been listening to it on repeat since then. Every song is good and it is one of those albums you can put in without the urge to jump around. Some of my favorites are "Southside of Heaven", "Bread and Water", and "Best of Me" Check out his website at the following link

http://www.binghammusic.com/

GET BETTER BODA!!

I was just back east for my good friend Frank Brawley's wedding to Patricia Ballantyne. It was a beautifule wedding and it was great to spend the weekend with my family and so many friends that I have not seen in a while.

On Saturday night though one of the nicest and most widely admired people I know Robert Svboda fell off a deck at the house he was staying at and broke his back. He is undergoing surgery today, so please keep him in your thoughts and hope for the best.

Diddy Sucks @ Golf

I played golf on Sunday with Huston and Bronson and beat the pants off both of them. Really beautiful, long, and hard course @ the same place we slayed the bass. We actually all played terribly but had a great time.

HOLY BIG MOUTH BASS!!

you can click on these pics to see the full size

I just experienced the most ridiculous bass fishery I have ever seen or heard of. I am not afraid to tell you about it cause you can't go unless you are a big swinging you no what in Atlanta. My buddy H-dog has a little you know what but somehow finagled his way into this private club called the Piedmont Driving Club. This place has a beautiful golf course that is surrounding this 150(?) acre lake. They have a covered dock that houses about 20 boats all of which are rigged with trolling motors. Last Thursday Diddy and I got up at about 5 and were on the water at about quarter to six. I have been hearing about this place for a while but I am not a very optimistic person when it comes to places like this that have been hyped up because I carry a hex with me that makes most places suck when I make a big effort to get there. In this instance however my expectations were exceeded, and from what I am told we had a mediocre day at best when you consider the hogs that come out of this place every week.

Regardless of what normally happens I was totally blown away. I also quickly learned that every bass I have ever caught in my life was 2lbs lighter than I thought. We had a scale with us and with the first 3 or 4 fish we were throwing out 4-5 lb guesstimates for fish that actually weighed 2-3. I started out fishing with a white fluke while Diddy fished a 9" pumpkin seed worm with a slider. Neither really seemed to have much of an advantage over the other as we were both catching fish pretty steadily. Not to toot my own horn but one of the first moments we wish we got on tape was when I threw my fluke as far as I could right up against the 17th hole bulk head and a nice fish picked it up as soon as it hit the water. I gave this fish the definition of a red neck heave because it was a long distance hook set and I knew I needed to put a little extra ass in it. As soon as I set the hook it felt like a big fish and right as I start exclaiming, "it feels like a lunker" this thing comes all the way out of the water and throws the fluke about 4 feet up my line. Shortly after this Diddy hooked into a fish that is shown in the pics that totally dwarfed the fish I just caught. We ended up landing about 14 nice fish only two of which broke the 4lb mark.

About 7:30 I witnessed something that has changed my life forever. Right off of the 18th hole I hooked into a relatively small fish, maybe 1 lb tops. As I was rushing this fish into get it off my line I noticed some movement behind the fish. As I got the fish right up to the boat and squinted my eyes to see what was approaching from the depths, moby dick hit the gas and inhaled the bass that I was about to land. I almost fell out of the other side of the boat as it appeared an alligator had just attacked my fish. I immediately flipped the bail and let the monster run with my fish. I gave the fish about 30 seconds to run and in hindsight I should have given it at least a minute. I flipped the bail and put a little tension on the line it felt steady and heavy like I was hooked on a log as opposed to hooked up with a little fish. I preceded to reel down on this fish and give it another red neck heave only to rip the lips off of the little fish that had not yet been completely inhaled. I know people always talk about how big the one that got away was but I almost started crying. This fish's head was as big as mine and that is saying something. I can't even begin to guess what it weighed but it had to be in the double digits.

Anyway it was a great trip, and I can't wait to come back and visit.

D Sheats Special

Went fishing yesterday with Sheats and teamed up with Judson Rogers and a bunch of his buddies. THe spot required a pretty decent hike in which is great because it keeps out most people. Sheats and I fished on the far side of the river which required a lot of billy goating which at times got kind of annoying but ultimately aids the fishing for the same reasons as above. Just to give you an idea we spent a lot of time with our rods in our mouth because we were on all fours trying not to slide off the mountain. THis place continues to blow my mind because I have never seen a place except for newzealand that seems to only have huge fish. The water is crystal clear and while you are billy goating around the cliffs on the side of the river you consistenly look down into these sexy holes that are just loaded with big fish that you probably will not be able to catch. For the most part the day was pretty slow. We were all fishing hard and throwing everything we had at them. Sheats was even fishing 7x which in my opinion is retarded because even if you hook one of these things it would be just short of a miracle if you land it on 7x beacuse not only are the fish huge but the water is cranking. Anyway most of us were still skunked at noon. I hooked a smaller fish in the ass and was pumped to have the skunk out until sheats informed me that does not count. Anyway at about 3:00 right before I was ready to go lay down in the woods and take a nap I took off my strike indicator lengthened my leader by about 3 feet and tied on a huge stone fly nymph with two big weights tied into it. Then I put on a size 16 dsheats special(caddis fly that Sheats ties) about 2.5 feet behind the stone fly, and despite my better judgement I was using 6x fluoro carbon. Anyway for whatever reason this seemed to be the ticket. I think it was all about getting the caddis fly at the right depth and far enough away from the stone fly that it could get a good drift. Also it is worth noting that there was an incredible caddis hatch coming off but absolutely no fish rising. Anyway I proceeded to farm 4 big fish two of which were right in front of Sheats which makes it sting even more and then break off two nice fish. I was just about ready to snap my rod in half when I hooked the monster below. I will be the first to admit that this fish was almost a total fluke. I might as well have won the lottery. I could see the fish stacked in the current about 20 feet down stream and I just felt like the cast was where it needed to be and I saw the fish open its mouth without even moving so I set the hook. Took me close to ten minutes to land the fish not because if fought that hard but just becuse the thing was so heavy. I am pretty sure even though the pics don't do it justice this was the heaviest fish I have ever landed in America. It made one good run and tried to jump but it only got its fat ass about halfway out of the water. Ended up catching a couple more fish to round out the afternoon nicely only to find out that in addition to the PBRs Sheats stached in the river Jud and posse had two bottles of whiskey on ice waiting for us at the car. Wonderful ending to a fantastic day. Also worth noting that Sheats and I left at 6:30 am and did not get home til after 11pm.

John Prine with Emmylou Harris Live at Red Rocks 2008

McKee/Gurasich Clan comes to town

We just had the McKee Posse for a great but way too short visit. Hopefully we can get them to come back somtime soon when the skiing or the fishing is good. While they were here we ate a bunch of good food and saw some great music. The highlights were A'telier, which was really delicious food that was not neccesarily complimented by a bizarre atmosphere. We also had lunch at The Kitchen which continues not to dissapoint. On th music front we went an saw John Prine and Emmy Lou play at Red Rocks. Red Rocks is an incredible venue no matter who is playing but this was the first time I have been there to see an artist I was really excited about. The fact that Molly and Bob had never been there before and Sarah has an unhealthy obssession with Emmy Lou made it even more exciting.

Sarah will be mad at me for blogging about this but I actually thought emmy lou stunk the place up! If you are playing in front of 50,000 people that paid 40 bucks to see you the least you can do is learn the lyrics to the songs you are singing. Not only that but it is disrespectful to the person on the stage with if they are the one that wrote the songs. When she had to read the lyrics to angel from montgomery it totally blew my mind. Everybody in the world know the words to that song. Not only was she reading the lyrics but she totally botched the performance. If you are curious you can watch that video on you tube at the following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mWvv3lFHbg&feature=related

Thank god John Prine is a huge bad ass and put on an incredible performance. I was really there to see emmy lou and did not know much about John Prine, but he totally blem me away. He played for 2.5 hours without a set break. I think a really powerful sign of a talented artist is when they have the ability to completely silence a crowd because everybody at the conert is hanging on every word. Check out this link to see what I am talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nd6fgL-jv0&feature=related durin "Hello in There" and most of his songs you could hear a mouse fart. Anyway I had a great time at the show and can't wait to get all the JP albums Bob is sending us. Thank you sarah for getting us tickets and sorry I ripped on Emmy Lou, but pewwweee!

JP and Emmy Lou playing in spite of ourselves. Tell emmy lou to put down the paper.

Turkeys a lot Gordo Nothin!

I am pretty sure I worked harder last weekend then any other turkey hunter in America, and I have nothing to show for it. NOT EVEN ONE GOBBLE. I did see two hens which has been par for the course for this season. One of the things that I love about turkey hunting is that it is so difficult to call in a spring tom. I think my average is about 1 bird every 3 years and I hunt every chance that I get which is usually every weekend of the season at least. Usually though I at least get to talk to the birds and end up getting outsmarted. This year however I had a couple homosexual interactions with some hens but did not have one gobbler talk to me. Conclusion: hunting on public land sucks!! There were so many gapers in the woods this last weekend I was more worried about getting shot than I was about shooting something. As a result I ended up hiking from lewis creek trail head all the way over adobe peak which ended up being about a 6 hour round trip(4-5 miles, 3000 feet vertical??) on no breakfast and not enough water. I was seeing spots when I finally got back to the truck. NOte to self never ever hunt public land on memorial day weekend again. Did get some good advice from some locals I trust on places to go next year. Also I am more motivated than ever to work my butt off and get rich so I can hunt on my own property in the future.

Mom's Visit

Mom just left and we had a great time while she was here. Everyday was action packed. While she was here we managed to hike the royal arch trail, watch the Rockies spank the twins, see the Lipizzaner stallions in Broomfield, and eat lots of good food. Here are some pics from the visit.

Texas Trip

Sarah and I just got back from Austin. We went down there to visit Molly,John, and Emily(Sarah's sister,brother in-law, and niece) and do some fishing and turkey hunting. We had an awesome time eventhough the turkey hunting did not prove to be succesful. This season I have managed to call in two hens which has led me to believe I sound like a lesbian turkey. John took me to his ranch which is pretty unbelievable. When we set up on friday morning we heard 4 different birds gobble but we couldn't get any to work with us. My excuse besides my gay calling was the oppresive heat. Way to hot to even think about doin it. Later on we walked up on another spot John thought might be holding birds and we got busted by two big toms and a jake. Decided to call it quits and do some fishing. The bass pond on this place is pretty incredible. THe water is gin clear and you can see lunkers cruising the banks. John and I both caught some nice fish but no monsters. Sarah caught and released all be herself several nice brim. All on the fly I might add.

Saturday Sarah and I had a full day in austin. THe highlights being a butt naked fat chick at barton springs and seeing James Hand play at the continental club. Finished up the day with some great sushi at mizou(cougar territory) after starting the day with the world's biggest breakfast taco at Jim Bob's trading post.

Here is a video of emily checking out her first turkey call and a picture of one of the bass.

Dex goes down at Berthoud

Grassman and I went and skied Berthoud the other day, and on our first run I got a little too close to dex and the edge of my ski caught his right leg. I barely nicked him and he did not even make a noise but when we stopped I noticed he was bleeding profusely and had a big junk of sking/furr dangling from his leg. I took off my shirt and Grassman and I bandaged up his leg for the rest of the trip out. WHen we got to the bottom we were pretty fortunate to get picked up right away by a construction worker on his way over the pass. The guy was very generous and compassionate. Fortunately he had a first aid kit on him and he helped us bandage dex up for the trip to the vet. He also insisted that we take extra gauze, first aid ointment, and tape for the trip to the vet. People like this guy really restore my faith in the inherent goodness of people, and because of him a potentially really awful situation turned out just fine. We got dex to the vet quickly and within a matter of a couple hours, a lot of cheez, and about 20 stitches later we were on our way.